Re: modem config.............

[Damion Yates <nospam [at] rd.bbc.co.uk>]

On Mon, 1 Nov 1999, Robert Speed wrote:

> sheflug - http://www.sheflug.co.uk
>
> > >Isapnp is a good bet. If that doesn't find it, nothing will. Probably, a
> > >good way to check if the modem is a winmodem or not is to send it a
> > >hayes command? I.e., send it 'AT' and you should get the response 'OK'.
> > >I don't know about this (someone will correct me, I'm sure), but I
> > >wouldn't think a winmodem will respond to the hayes command set. If they
> > >*do*, I think that's a rotten design decision ;))
>
> Nope, you can still send AT commands - it's the bit after that, that
> gets messy...

Are you certain that is right? A definite winmodem, known as and called a
winmodem on the box that works in windows and doesn't work at all in Linux?

They should not be able to be spoken to at all under Linux, there would be
nothing to send an OK to, they don't need a serial device. Under windows
they can create a virtual serial device for slip/ppp to attach to but even
that isn't nessesary, this likens them to ISDN cards which can have virtual
serial devices but don't need them for syncPPP connections.

If you've sent an AT to them under windows that tells us nothing, it's one of
the basic things that you would emulate in the driver.

Winmodems were popular a while back as they were cheaper, but they wern't
'that' common, especially as they didn't work under NT initially (they may
still not). A common mistake was to assume an isaPnP modem was a win modem.
It might not work in the slightest under linux and may have an odd
IRQ/ioaddress but that doesn't mean it can't work. To test fully, get it so
it responds OK to an AT, note the irq/ioaddress and then soft boot in to
Linux.

To softboot to Linux drop to the DOS prompt from your current OS, then run
loadlin.exe kernel root=/dev/hda?

Where loadlin.exe comes with all linux dists and is a dos executable so needs
to be on a dos drive. kernel is a kernel image of about 650k and /dev/hda1 /dev/hda2 /dev/hda3 /dev/hda4 /dev/hda5 /dev/hda6 /dev/hda7 /dev/hda8 /dev/hda9
is your root partition (this shows up in a df command).

Getting loadlin and your kernel to dos if you'd forgotten and have messed up
lilo or something is a common need, there are a number of apps for
dos/windows a friend of mine wrote a dos ext2 ftp like client called dft, I'd
like people with dos and linux to try it out:
get ftp://ftp.bbc.co.uk/pub/Damion/dft*

Loadlin is ideal for testing new kernels or rescuing linux setups and failed
lilo/change of hard disk/etc.. and for the above PnP issues. I have an
ESS1688 audio card that 95% works ok with isapnp under linux, but doesn't get
any volume on midi output, so I use the supplied dos utils and my boot uses
Dos6.22 menus for the choice menu, which defaults after 1 second to Linux.

Damion

--
Damion Yates - Damion.Yates [at] bbc.co.uk

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